Excess of Democracy

Following up on last year's post on a ten-year retrospective on the Supreme Court clerks from October Term 2003, here's what the clerks from October Term 2004 are doing. This list is probably unreliable and has not been fact-checked in any way, except for the links provided (and these links often aren't the best source material).

For those still in private practice, 11 are from "conservative" justices (same as last year), and 7 from "liberal" justices (up from 3), good for 18 placements.

For academia, the interest is down dramatically from the 14 placements last year--there are just 3 in academia from OT2004: two from Breyer, one from Kennedy, two of them at Ivies.

In government/public interest, the total is 7 from "conservatives" (up from 3) and 7 from "liberals" (up from 4).

Is there an inertia to clerk classes? Is there a reason that government employees basically doubled between the OT2003 and OT2004 classes, while those entering academia plummeted 80%? Is comparing anecdata for two years' sets of clerks worth much more than a few minutes of baseless Internet speculation? Rest easy--it is certainly little more than that.